Written almost 150 years ago by John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal, is a tremendous catalog of mostly forgotten slang words and phrases.
One of them is “twitter.”
💬 twitter – “all in a twitter”, in a fright or fidgety state.
Isn’t that exactly what’s going on at Twitter HQ these days?
Twitter today is like a “poll” who should “put in the pin.”
💬 poll – a female of unsteady character; “polled up,” means living with a woman in a state of unmarried impropriety.
💬 pin – “to put in the pin,” to refrain from drinking.
The Slang Dictionary is available for free on Project Gutenberg.
More info: This is what the words “twitter,” “pin” and “button” meant in the 19th century
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